The Bishop of Cottontown: A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills
the gate around, he stepped over and then shuffled along in his lazy
way toward the house.
It was an old farmhouse, now devoid of paint; and the path to it had
once been a well-kept gravel walk, lined with cedars; but the
box-plants, having felt no pruning shears for years, almost filled,
with their fantastically jagged boughs, the narrow path, while the
cedars tossed about their broken and dead limbs.
The tall, square pillars in the house, from dado above to where they
rested in the brick base below, showed the naked wood, untouched so
long by paint that it had grown furzy from rain and snow, and
splintery from sun and heat. Its green shutters hung, some of them,
on one hinge; and those which could be closed, were shut up close and
sombre under the casements.
A half dozen hounds came baying and barking around him. As Jud
proceeded, others poured out from under the house. All were ribby,
and half starved.
Without a moment's hesitation they promptly covered Bonaparte, much
to the delight of that genius. Indeed, from the half-satisfied, half
malignant snarl which lit up his face as they piled rashly and
brainlessly on him, Jud took it that Bonaparte had trotted all these
miles just to breakfast on this remnant of hound on the half-shell.
In a few minutes Bonaparte's terrible, flashing teeth had them flying
in every direction.
Jud promptly cuffed him back to the gate and bade him wait there.
On the front portico, his chair half-tilted back, his trousers in his
boot legs, and his feet on the balustrade rim, the uprights of which
were knocked out here and there, like broken teeth in a comb,--sat a
man in a slouch hat, smoking a cob pipe. He was in his shirt sleeves.
His face was flushed and red; his eyes were watery, bleared. His head
was fine and long--his nose and chin seemed to meet in a sharp point.
His face showed that form of despair so common in those whom whiskey
has helped to degenerate. He did not smile--he scowled continuously,
and his voice had been imprecatory so long that it whined in the same
falsetto twang as one of his hounds.
Jud stepped forward and bowed obsequiously.
"How are you to-day, Majah, sah?" he asked while his puckered and
wrinkled face tried to smile.
Jud was chameleon. Long experience had taught him to drop
instinctively into the mannerism--even the dialect--of those he hoped
to cajole. With the well-bred he could speak glibly, and had airs
himself. With the illiterate and the low-bred, he could out-Caliban
the herd of them.
The man did not take the pipe out of his mouth. He did not even turn
his head. Only his two bleared eyes shot sidewise down to the
ground, where ten feet below him stood the employment agent of the
mills, smiling, smirking, and doing his best to spell out on the
signboard of his unscrupulous face the fact that he came in peace and
good will.
Major Edward Conway scarcely grunted--it might have been anything
from an oath to an eructation. Then, taking his pipe-stem from
between his teeth, and shifting his tobacco in his mouth,--for he was
both chewing and smoking--he expectorated squarely into the eyes of a
hound which had followed Jud up the steps, barking and snarling at
his heels.
He was a good marksman even with spittle, and the dog fled, whining.
Then he answered, with an oath, that he was about as well as the
rheumatism and the beastly weather would permit.
Jud came up uninvited and sat down. The Major did not even turn his
head. The last of a long line of gentlemen did not waste his manners
on one beneath him socially.
Jud was discreetly silent, and soon the Major began to tell all of
his troubles, but in the tone of one who was talking to his servant
and with many oaths and much bitterness:
"You see it's this damned rheumatism, Carpenter. Las' night, suh, I
had to drink a quart of whiskey befo' I cu'd go to sleep at all. It
came on me soon aftah I come out of the wah, an' it growed on me like
jim'son weeds in a hog-pen. My appetite's quit on me--two pints of
whiskey an' wild-cherry bark a day, suh, don't seem to help it at
all, suh. I cyant tell whut the devil's the matter with my stomach.
Nothin' I eat or drink seems to agree with me but whiskey. If I drink
this malarial water, suh, m'legs an' m'feet begin to swell. I have to
go back to whiskey. Damn me, but I was born for Kentucky. Why, I've
got a forty dollar thirst on me this very minute. I'm so dry I cu'd
kick up a dust in a hog wallow. Maybe, though, it's this rotten stuff
that cross-roads Jew is sellin' me an' callin' it whiskey. He's got a
mortgage on everything here but the houn's and the house cat, an'
he's tryin' to see if he cyant kill me with his bug-juice an' save a
suit in Chancery. I'm goin' to sen' off an' see if I cyant git
another bran' of it, suh."
Edward Conway was the type of the Southerner wrecked financially and
morally by the war. His father and grandfather had owned Millwood,
and the present owner had gone into the war a carefully educated,
well reared youth of twenty. He came out of it alive, it is true,
but, like many another fine youth of both North and South, addicted
to drink.
The brutality of war lies not alone in death--it is often more fatal,
more degenerating, in the life it leaves behind.
Coming out of the war, Conway found, as did all others in the
Tennessee Valley who sided with the South, that his home was a wreck.
Not a fence, even, remained--nothing but the old home--shutterless,
plasterless, its roof rotten, its cellar the abode of hogs.
Thousands of others found themselves likewise--brave hearts--men they
proved themselves to be--in that they built up their homes out of
wreck and their country out of chaos.
The man who retrieves his fortune under the protecting arm of law and
order is worthy of great praise; but he who does it in the surly,
snarling teeth of Disorder itself is worthy of still greater praise.
And the real soldier is not he with his battles and his bravery. All
animals will fight--it is instinct. But he who conquers in the great
moral battle of peace and good government, overcoming prejudice,
ignorance, poverty and even injustice, till he rises to the height of
the brave whose deeds do vindicate them--this is the real soldier.
Thousands of Southern soldiers did this, but Edward Conway had not
been one of them. For where whiskey sits he holds a scepter whose
staff is the body of the Upas tree, and there is no room for the oak
of thrift or the wild-flower of sweetness underneath.
From poverty to worse poverty Edward Conway had gone, until now,
hopelessly mortgaged, hopelessly besotted, hopelessly soured, he
lived the diseased product of weakness, developed through stimulated
inactivity.
Nature is inexorable, morally, physically, mentally, and as two
generations of atheists will beget a thief, so will two generations
of idle rich beget nonentities.
On this particular morning that Jud Carpenter came, things had
reached a crisis with Edward Conway. By a decree of the court, the
last hope he had of retaining a portion of his family estate had been
swept away, and the entire estate was to be advertised for sale, to
satisfy a mortgage and judgment. It is true, he had the two years of
redemption under the Alabama law, but can a drunkard redeem his land
when he can not redeem himself?
And so, partly from despair, and partly from that instinct which
makes even the most sensitive of mortals wish to pour their secret
troubles into another's ear, partly even from drunken recklessness,
Edward Conway sat on his verandah this morning and poured his
troubles into the designing ear of Jud Carpenter. The refrain of his
woe was that luck--luck--remorseless luck was against him.
Luck, since the beginning of the world, has been the cry of him who
gambles with destiny. Work is the watchword of the man who believes
in himself.
This thing went because that man had been against him, and this went
because of the faithlessness of another. His health--well, that was
God's doing.
Jud was too shrewd to let him know that he thought whiskey had
anything to do with it--and so, very cautiously did the employment
agent proceed.
A child with sunny hair and bright eyes ran across the yard. She was
followed by an old black mammy, whose anxiety for fear her charge
might get her clothes soiled was plainly evident; from the parlor
came the notes of an old piano, sadly out of tune, and Jud could hear
the fine voice of another daughter singing a love ballad.
"You've got two mighty pyeart gyrls here," at last he ventured.
"Of course, they are, suh," snapped their father--"they are
Conways."
"Ever think of it, sah," went on Jud, "that they could make you a
livin' in the mill?"
Conway was silent. In truth, he had thought of that very thing.
To-day, however, he was nerved and desperate, being more besotted
than usual.
"Now, look aheah--it's this way," went on Jud--"you're gettin' along
in age and you need res'. You've been wuckin' too hard. I tell you,
Majah, sah, you're dead game--no other man I know of would have stood
up under the burdens you've had on yo' shoulders."
The Major drew himself up: "That's a family trait of the Conways,
suh."
"Wal, it's time for you to res' awhile. No use to drive a willin'
hoss to death. I can get a place for both of the gyrls in the mill,
an' aftah the fust month--aftah they learn the job, they can earn
enough to support you comf't'bly. Now, we'll give you a nice little
cottage--no bother of keepin' up a big run-down place like this--jes'
a neat little cottage. Aunt Mariah can keep it in nice fix. The gyrls
will be employed and busy an' you can jes' live comf't'bly, an' res'.
An' say," he added, slyly--"you can get all the credit at the
Company's sto' you want an' I'm thinkin' you'll find a better brand
of licker than that you've been samplin'."
Besotted as he was--hardened and discouraged--the proposition came
over Conway with a wave of shame. Even through his weakened mind the
old instinct of the gentleman asserted itself, and for a moment the
sweet refined face of a beautiful dead wife, the delicate beauty of a
little daughter, the queenliness of an elder one, all the product of
good breeding and rearing, came over him. He sprang to his feet.
"What do you mean, suh? My daughters--grandchildren of Gen. Leonidas
Conway--my daughters work in the mill by the side of that poor trash
from the mountains? I'll see you damned first."
He sat down--he bowed his head in his hands. A glinty look came into
his eyes.
Jud drew his chair up closer: "But jes' think a minute--you're sold
out--you've got no whur to go, you've wuck'd yo'self down tryin' to
save the farm. We've all got to wuck these days. The war has changed
all the old order of things. We havn't got any mo' slaves."
"We,"--repeated Conway, and he looked at the man and laughed.
Jud flushed even through his sallow skin:
"Wal, that's all right," he added. "Listen to me, now, I'm tryin' to
save you from trouble. The war changed everything. Your folks got to
whur they did by wuckin'. They built up this big estate by economy
an' wuck. Now, you mus' do it. You've got the old dead-game Conway
breedin' in yo' bones an' you've got the brains, too." He lowered his
voice: "It's only for a little while--jes' a year or so--it'll give
you a nice little home to live in while you brace up an' pull out of
debt an' redeem yo' farm. Here--it is only for a year or so--sign
this--givin' you a home, an' start all over in life--sign it right
there, only for a little while--a chance to git on yo' feet--."
Conway scarcely knew how it happened that he signed--for Jud quickly
changed the subject.
After a while Jud arose to go. As he did so, Lily, the little